Water in Botswana: Selective distribution of a finite commodity among indigenes (San), African villages and non-indigenous white minority communities, 1880s-2020.

Abstract

This article examines how water – a finite commodity, known in Setswana as metsi – has been distributed over time in Botswana. It argues that from pre-colonial times to the era of the post-colony there have been ever-growing calls for the rational and equitable distribution of water among all the inhabitants of the country. However, despite the increasing demand for equitable distribution of the resource, water has been unevenly and selectively distributed across space. Rain (known as pula in Setswana) is precarious. The disparities in the distribution of scarce water resources in a predominantly desert environment without much rain are historically evident in the distribution of the resources among indigenes (e.g. the San), village Africans, and non-indigenous minority communities occupying the so-called white enclaves. In the pre-colonial and colonial periods, water was administered and distributed by ‘tribal authorities with no serious focus on minority Indigenous groups (indigenes) such as the Kalahari San, who over time have been unequivocally displaced from their original lands or habitats. The colonial administration of the Bechuanaland Protectorate did not only neglected the San but was also disinclined towards developing the water sector beyond the few white enclaves dotted in parts of the arid-to-semi-arid country to beneft the ever-expanding African village settlements. Such a discriminatory, selective, and non-inclusive approach to water delivery had telling consequences for the sector’s development in colonial and post-colonial Botswana continued to negate a small, albeit increasingly growing Kalahari San voice for the extension of water and land rights to this marginalised community.